It's just this: if we had a ride service with level 5 self-driving, it'd be way cheaper to use that than personally own a car. You'd accelerate the transition to an all-electric fleet. You might even need fewer total cars, which would help even more.
Self-driving taxis can pick up multiple people going to the same place and take them there no matter where they want to go.
Of course the US has a lot more problems with implementing public transport that aren't easy to solve and are rooted in zoning/city planning. Single family home suburbs don't have the density to justify public transit.
I'm glad that someone is forcing the move away from fossil fuels. Because even in a "progressive" bike friendly town, I see how popular that is. Not very, even among the young and childless.
And self-driving doesn't have much to do with saving the environment. It's about saving lives, considering the massive number of people killed and injured by cars every year. As far as ways to get rich and things for the wealthy to spend their time and money on, that's a pretty good choice in my book.
It'd increase car-miles (likely increasing congestion) and likely lead to a move away from public transit in denser regions, akin to uber.
I'm highly doubful a large sharing economy for cars will happen anyway. Conventional car sharing (not uber) isn't popular and one reason for that is that people like having a personal car as a second "living room" (leaving personal belongings) without strangers and for the instant and hassle-free access it provides.
Thus I believe that self-driving will just lead to people driving more with their own personal vehicles, since it's becomes easier to do something else while driving and feels like less of a time sink.
Not sure. Think about people driving others somewhere and then have to drive back, e.g. their children, drunk people or a friend to the airport etc.
In addition, to reduce the price, people could share a car dynamically - that would essentially be a mix between private and public transport. I think overall those points would probably rather reduce the number of rides. If anything, it would be the convenience that increases the rides - but at least that comes with a real benefit.
And for congestion - it would probably be the total opposite. Look at cities and much percentage of the road is blocked by parking vehicles. Imagine 90% are gone. Roads gonna be bigger - that alone would be a huge pro.
I think the point was people will own their own self driving car instead of sharing with the unwashed masses.
Send it to go pickup the kids, get the groceries at the curb loading station, drive you home from the bar &etc. With good scheduling one car could run around all day picking up and dropping off the family members while running the errands in between.
Of course this is a US centric view because people from other parts of the world are used to having efficient mass transit and not needing to own a car.